Water coming out of the mouth (as was implied by the very contents of this thread)= spit!
Not really. Put a glass into the refrigerator and get cold. Breathe gently into the glass so that no spit comes out. That's condensation from the lungs that forms, not spit.
Hurrah!
The form of water discussed there was in fluid form.
I had a student once who always was having to empty water out of his horn. His tonguing was terrible until I diagnosed in about the second lesson that he was using his tongue for his lower lip! When we got that fixed, the waterproblem went away too. He went on to become a pretty respectable player. The clear lexan mouthpiece told the tale here.
ScottM
imperialbari wrote:Rain is water condensed from evaporated H2O. Rain is not known to contain calcium of any significan amount. ....
Klaus... that's because when water is evaporated it is essentially the same as distilled water... pure except for the dirt it collects on it's way back to Earth.
Dan Schultz
"The Village Tinker" http://www.thevillagetinker.com" target="_blank
Current 'stable'... Rudolf Meinl 5/4, Marzan (by Willson) euph, King 2341, Alphorn, and other strange stuff.
Possibly not relevant, but I am seeing references to lime deposits and calcium in the lead pipe; and to me this sounds unlikely. White(ish) crusty, flaky deposits that look like the fur you get in kettles I have seen, but has anyone actually analyzed this crust and identified it as lime ? If it is actually lime, it should come out with one of those cleaning products sold for de-scaling coffee-machines, which mostly contain formic acid, I believe.
On the original topic: After a lot of hard tonguing at high dynamics, I have sometimes found small bubbles in my mouthpiece. I take this to be fair evidence of inadvertent spitting. On the other hand, I get water in all my valve slides, and eventually in the compensating loops, especially on cold days; This looks like fair evidence for condensation, although it is conceivable that spit may travel that far as a fine aerosol. Of course, I can't tell if this water originates in the lungs, or results from spit evaporating in the mouthpipe.
I have recently switched to a larger mouthpiece. I am not aware of tonguing any harder, so there is no obvious reason for increased spitting, but I seem to be getting more water than before. I have to breath more often, so I must be using more air to get a richer (but not louder) sound. This suggests that the water in the instrument condenses from my breath, with more breath releasing more water, but spit carried as an aerosol is probably also a factor, nearer to the mouthpiece.
you sometimes see conductors and pianists sweating profusely during performances and no one says "yuk", and the string players leave a residue of horsehair and rosin that is equally obnoxious.
however, the water content of inspired air is completely variable, but expired air is saturated with water, the only organs in the body that excretes more water than the lungs are the kidneys, so being as it expired air that drives a tuba, it will be water that accumulates in the tubing.
as for more water meaning that the player is working too hard, well some player do work too hard, but the production of "warm air" in playing will be water saturated, so I expect to empty quite a lot of water while playing, and I would suspect that players who produce no water might to be breathing as efficiently as they might.
we should remember to breath into the tuba not spit
What about the mouthpiece test: when I warm up buzzing the mouthpiece, it tends to drip a lot. It seems to me that there's no way that my breath can produce that much liquid that quickly - I use almost no tongue when doing my buzz warm-up. So there's probably a significant amount of spit coming through. That said, I don't think it is physically possible to blow a large amount of liquid upwards for the many vertical feet it must travel to reach some of the slides that need emptying, especially if you consider the generally slow speed and pressure of the air. Warm breath, however, makes its way through the tube and its moisture happily settles on all surfaces.
My guess is that the stuff that comes out of the main tuning slide has a good deal of spit in it and that what shows up in physically harder-to-reach slides (because of gravity) is probably mostly water. And when I recently played outside in the cold, a new great lake formed over the course of the 1.5 hour gig.
As to Bloke's original point, as I've learned to increase the volume of air through the tuba, my tone has continued to improve, and the amount of whatever it is in there that needs emptying has increased.
It occurs to me that there's just got to be some kind of study out there that gives a general description of the amount of water the human body loses through breathing (per hour, under different levels of intensity, etc.).
I am strictly an amateur, playing only in the foundations of community bands, and the sound I aspire to most is the "big velvet cloud" sound that wraps the hearer in luxury but isn't really noticed until it stops: I suspect this may be achieved when the upper harmonics in the sound are suppressed as much as possible - maybe an ooom vowel, as opposed to aaah ?
Assuming that we want to minimize upper harmonics, the waveform of the sound must not have sharp edges (eg. a sawtooth wave with sharp edges is rich in higher harmonics, like a fiddle) so the lips cannot be snapping shut and re-opening; they must either be rolling smoothly against each other, or be held permanently apart (at a small, but varying, distance) by a wedge of moving air. Possibly there is a trade-off - a well trained lip rolls more smoothly, so it needs less of an air wedge. For what it's worth I'm fairly sure (for a given value of sure) that when I achieve the sound I want, I can't feel my lips touching.
If this speculation has any basis in reality, it would mean that tight lips beating against each other can never produce the sound I want; the lips need to be relaxed as much as possible, to allow them to ride on the airstream, and the constant flow of the "air wedge" is a cost of doing business. A "pretty buzz" necessarily requires more air support to prevent the lips from actually meeting, and an air-miser buzz that allows the lips to meet introduces upper harmonics and is automatically ugly by comparison.
Does anyone have slow-mo shots through a transparent mp ? do the lips actually meet ?
Does anyone have slow-mo shots through a transparent mp ? do the lips actually meet ?
I recall seeing a series of frames from such a film in a book about musical acoustics. I don't recall what book it was, but it showed the aperture between a trumpet player's lips opening and nearly closing so that its area fluctuated with an almost perfectly sinusoidal pattern.
The sound from the bell has higher harmonics because of the non-linear compressibility of air in the tubing; the bell emphasizes those higher harmonics by emitting them more efficiently.
We can hear when a student's lips are flapping against each other, and we urge the student to open wide to reduce that effect.
As for the saliva vs. water question, some people always want to play with wet lips, and some of us prefer to keep them dry. That can make a difference in the amount of saliva that goes through the mouthpiece, but not in the amount of water vapor.
Last edited by Art Hovey on Wed May 16, 2012 11:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MikeW wrote:
Does anyone have slow-mo shots through a transparent mp ? do the lips actually meet ?
That was me, and my only excuse is it was late; I finally clued in to what I was saying, and checked on you-tube. There are plenty of applicable videos there, including one of a trombonist playing with a wet embouchure - plenty of saliva in evidence.
It looks as if the lips don't actually meet, especially on higher notes. I guess this must be well explored territory, so I'll go dig around the web and see what I can learn. One thing that surprised me a lot was a demonstration that you can buzz on the outside of the lip, which is vulnerable to outside interference, or you can buzz on the inside of the lip, which is much more stable. The next thing I need is a way to apply this stuff to lower notes - I still can't get anything like a buzz below the staff without the instrument, even with a mouthpiece.
I guess I'll be leaving you guys in peace for a few days while I google.
I obviously don’t agree with bloke on the theory of a more efficient embouchure leading to less water from the water keys.
We agree upon an efficient embouchure wasting less air.
At least one ww-method that I know of advises trying to promote the wide & warm airstream by trying to cover a bathroom mirror with condensed steam (or fog or whatever the term might be). This only will happen with a fairly slow speed of air, as a fast airstream will create turbulences that involve dry air which makes the fog lift.
When school tubists allegedly have to unload more water from their water keys than happens with professional tubists, then there may be causalities different from bloke’s theory.
At least towards the end of the school year school tubas are more dirty inside than professional instruments ever will get. Dirt provides the nucleuses necessary for water to condense.
School tubists hardly are able to play as steadily as professional players and hence warm their instruments less efficiently, which also furthers condensation.
imperialbari wrote:At least one ww-method that I know of advises trying to promote the wide & warm airstream by trying to cover a bathroom mirror with condensed steam (or fog or whatever the term might be). This only will happen with a fairly slow speed of air, as a fast airstream will create turbulences that involve dry air which makes the fog lift.
But exactly because the mirror isn't an enclosed volume that captures all that breath. Unlike the tuba, which will distill the vapor from your breath whether it be fast or slow.
It does seem possible in principle, though, that someone who breathes efficiently will expel warmer air, with more water in it.
Bloke is using condensation as a surrogate for air flow. Air flow is a quantity, not a quality. Quality is a different issue.
I happen to believe that one can try to replace with air flow what one does not have in embouchure strength. The result will be a woofy sound and frequent depletion. Ask me how I know.
A rich, vibrant, colorful sound demonstrates efficiency, and I hear high-end teachers talk about efficiency all the time. What else can efficiency be but the ratio of sound quality to air quantity?
The thing is this: both inadequate air flow and inadequate buzz can reduce efficiency. The notion of overcoming an unresonant sound by improving buzz without also solving an inadequate air problem may not be possible. That may explain the usual emphasis on air flow. But it seems to me that one cannot separate the buzz from the air quality (vis a vis quantity). The embouchure (including the oral cavity behind it) is what makes warm air warm.
Tuba Guy wrote:The last couple times I emptied my horn out, I'm pretty sure the result was beer. I think that's indicative of another problem though...
I was expecting to see this post somewhere along the way. Sorta surprised it wasn't until page 4 though
Tuba Guy wrote:The last couple times I emptied my horn out, I'm pretty sure the result was beer. I think that's indicative of another problem though...
Yeah, your tuba playing is getting in the way of your drinking....
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